How to create a positive and profitable collision repair marketing program
Marketing plans are only as effective as their reach. You can't successfully market your collision center without understanding your target. Marketing has many facets that require research to determine the correct message, the right resource and the intended receiver.
The first step is to look where your business is coming from before changing a marketing plan. Once you determine where your business is coming from you will realize where it is not coming from, giving you a new direction for your marketing efforts.
You can use a program like Microsoft MapPoint or a paper city map to pinpoint addresses, zip codes and identify agents that have referred work. With that information you can easily mark where your existing business is coming from.
A good marketing program should look like a shotgun blast, but in most cases it will show you areas you are not reaching. Through this exercise you have completed the first discipline in creating a positive, profitable marketing program.
Look at the demographics of the area not being reached by your current marketing efforts. Drive through the area, see if there are collision centers in that area, find out if there is a strong direct repair program influence, and determine what is different about that area than the region your marketing is successful. Find one or two key factors that are unlike your strongest sales market and develop a strategy for that difference. Learning how to market in a secondary environment is the second discipline in creating a positive marketing program.
Determining where your marketing is successful and where it is not working as well as knowing the differences in the market areas prepares you to restructure your marketing program. One of the differences might be ethnic based, your marketing is not effective because of wording used in your advertisements, or it could be a college area and your marketing message is directed at an older audience.
Dissimilar targets require different approaches, just as a discussion with a body technician will be different than a painter; your marketing audience requires variation. Learning about the differences and altering your marketing processes is the third discipline in developing a profitable marketing plan.
Up to this point you have learned where your marketing is effective, where it is not and what the differences are in the market areas. The next six disciplines involve awareness, motivation, acceptance, brand preference, purchase transaction and customer satisfaction. Regardless of the market you have to ensure you generate awareness of your collision center, motivate potential customers to drive to your facility, create an acceptance of what you offer, identify your brand as unique, explain the processes that make doing business with you attractive and capitalize on your customer satisfaction index.
All these factor into the final discipline, setting your business apart from the competition or positioning.
What would make your business stand out from the others? That question is the key to a profitable marketing campaign. Your focus should be finding one of the six disciplines that you can utilize to make your collision center stand out among the competition.
Check your competition's advertising and see what they market as an asset. Measure their strength against yours and either directly compete with that strength or use one of the six disciplines to draw attention away from them.
Positioning your collision center above the competition can be tricky; it also has to be genuine and consistent with your company's ideals. Careful implementation of a process is required to communicate an understanding of your capabilities.
A quick way to communicate your company's ideals is through a slogan or tag line. Challenge your employees or previous customers to create a short catchy statement that describes your business and use it in all your communications.
Following these disciplines will help you move your marketing program to a new level, make it an effective tool, allow you to target specific areas and make the advertising you do more cost effective, thereby increasing profits.
